Thursday, May 19, 2022

Felling Trees

We had planned for some time to have the trees close to the house cut down.  While we realize this will increase the temperature inside the house, it protects the house from trees coming down on the house in storms.  





The tree by the garage was the most work.  It had to be cut down piece by piece to avoid the electric lines. After it was done, Al took the tractor and grappled up all the branches to get them out of the walkways.  


I counted the rings in the tree by the garage and it was about 70 years old.  




We have a lot of work ahead of us cleaning up and chopping firewood.  But we are very thankful for this wood that we will have it for firewood.  We had three trees in the front, three in back, and one in front of the garage.  There are also three or four in the ravine by the shop that will come down later today, if things go according to plan.  But the wind has picked up making it a bit dangerous.  We may wait for a day that is safer for the man (also a friend) who will cut them down. 

Unfortunately, when trees are cut down, animals can be affected.  In one case, there was a blue jay nest with three babies.  We are hoping momma jay will come and find them.  I keep telling the kids to leave them be, or no one will come back.  



  


9 comments:

  1. There are positives and negatives to everything. Keith just cut down our large pin oak in our front yard because of it's proximity to our house. I miss the beauty of the tree, but didn't want it falling into the house!

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    1. Exactly. It is hard because the sun is so bright now around the house. We have to protect the investment, though.

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  2. Interesting! Yes, do caution the kids. I still remember MANY years ago when sister Mary got pecked on the head by a momma jay. Ouch!

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  3. Woof ! Too much work for me.

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  4. It made me smile that Lori mentioned the blue jay pecking me on the head! I had immediately thought of that, too, when I read about the blue jays that fell with your tree. I'm not sure how old I was when that happened, but a baby bird was in the grass beneath the large elm tree, and I wanted to help it! Apparently that was not the right thing to do, because I hardly had it in my hands when the bigger bird swooped down and pecked my on the head! I guess I always assumed it was the mama bird, but do blue jay daddies stay around and help take care of the babies? I wish I knew more about birds like Chris and Ellen's kids do! I don't envy you for all the work of cutting and cleaning up all the wood, although I can appreciate how important it is for protecting the house, and using for firewood. I miss the fireplace we had on the farm, as well as the fires we had outside for roasting hot dogs and marshmallows! Hope you and the kids have some fun with it!

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    1. Awesome story. Yes, both the mother and father jays sit on the nest and feed the babies. We did end up seeing a jay on the nest feeding and tending again. This was a huge sigh of relief. We did make a few cuts to detach the segment the nest was in. Then we uprighted the four food segment with the nest, and put some branches up around it to protect the babies as best we could. We hope mom and dad can find them and tend to them okay. We didn't move them beyond where they were.

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    2. Just wanted to give you a heads up in case you use Jif peanut butter - there is a recall.
      https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts/j-m-smucker-co-issues-voluntary-recall-select-jifr-products-sold-us-potential-salmonella

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